we are all about pointless, blatant and unfounded generalizations. that, and a lot of judging. oh, and we don't do uppercase.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Friends and their worse halves

So its that time of the week when I spout nonsense on this page. And todays little nugget of a rant is about idiotic friends who used to be normal till they hooked up with random people you cannot get along with. These worse halves, or significantly bad others, so to speak, come in different flavors. Since some of these are unique to genders, they will be presented as such:1. Mrs. "You never visit us"Typically female, this is the ever so unpopular chick who manages to snag a popular guy, and then proceeds to assume that all his friends are her friends. The trouble: there is a *reason* why she was unpopular. Maybe she was just a whiny annoying snitch, maybe she didn't like to hang out with all the bad guys because they drink, maybe she's just plain hideously ugly. For whatever reason, she will proceed to take liberties with his friends making statements like, "you are such a good friend of ours. Why do you never visit?". The cause, my lady, is you. With these types, things are okay, till the mysterious process of marriagification eventually causes your friend to behave like her.2. Mr. "I'm better than you"This is a male type. Typically, a loser who is married to your cool female friend - the one whose panties you won in a wager at a bar. The guy suffers from perpetual insecurity caused by a belief that he's not good enough for her. Which he is not. To make it worse, your cool friend, instead of cursing her utter lack of judgement about the fool, actually gushes about him in his absence. Socializing with these dudes is a traumatic affair where you are constantly challenged to drink more, talk louder, drive faster/better. If this happens to be a loser who also makes lot of money, incomes will be discussed and cool addresses will be flaunted. And all the while your friend gazes adoringly at him as if he is a Greek God.3. Mrs "Look at me i'm so pretty"Female. Attention seeking. Attention seeking behavior not restricted to the husband. She will openly flirt with you, while the husband, your friend looks on. Things can get very embarassing. The other day, one of these types kept commenting that the mole on the tip of my nose was very cute. Reason: "I have a mole on the tip of my nose too, and I'm cute". These ones will accompany their hubbies to the pub where you and the bloke used to hang out before he terminated his effective life by marrying the chick. They will proceed to hog the attention of all the males around. It gets worse when he looks at her adoringly even as she manages to completely disgrace herself. You can only drown your annoyance in pints of beer.4. Mr. "Perfect as an antique book-case"An overachieving male, very successful. Cloyingly nice, and he treats your female friend like a princess. The only problem: the guy is about as interesting as the antique book case that he and your friend lovingly imported from italy. Interesting in a "Oh, here's an antique book case" kind of a way, but dead as far as conversations go.5. Mr. HawkMale chauvinist pig. Expects your friend to manage her career and the house at the same time. And heaven forbid if she makes more money than him. Basically an idiot. Should be shot. Gets worse when your female friend rationalizes it by uttering the dreaded "C" word: Compromise.6. Mrs. woolly mammothFemale. Ugly. Fat. Hairy. To make it worse, she is not even a nice person. Tried to convince your buddy - a very decent bloke, that you are the root of all evil in the world. Later, when he was sufficiently domesticated, prohibited him from meeting up with the buddies. Eventually succeeded in sucking all the life force out of the guy. Proceeded to dance on his lifeless body.

6 comments:

Brilliant. I'd say I totally know what you mean, except that I suspect in at least some of the cases I actually know who you mean, so it's a little less impressive.

Personally, the ones I struggle with most are the antique book cases. With all the others you rapidly get to the point where you're going to avoid the friend anyway, because pretty soon he / she is not going to be worth talking to, plus you genuinely object to the person they married / got together with. The trouble with antique book cases is you actually have nothing against them, and so you end up feeling both bored and guilty when you're with them. Conversely I think the 'I'm better than you' types are rather fun, because they're so hopelessly insecure and you can totally take their trip.

I think there's a seventh category that is closely related to antique book cases, btw (and applies to both men and women) - which is the harmless puppy category. This is when you have a friend who you value for their intelligence or tastes and then they go get together with someone sweet and harmless but basically dumb. You don't actually mind these worse halves, you're quite willing to give them a pat on the head when you see them, but then you want them to go away and play by themselves while you interact with your friend, except they never do and so you end up sitting there having to listen to the puppy prattle.

then there r the over-judgemental, over-analytical, highly intolerant, impossible-2-please types, who think its their natural duty to have an opinion on everything, including what soap their friends shd use...they often dont make it to "significant other" space, but if they did, would probably be the types who thought none of their partner's friends are gud enuff for them 2 hang with, and wud proceed to slowly chop off all social contact with a mallet !!!nope, we dont know anyone like that...do we ;)?

You forgot Ms. "I must mention my boyfriend/husband in relation to every single topic no matter how far fetching his connection to said topic is". As well as Mr. & Mrs. "We prefer more married friends".

Hmmm. Yet there are friendships so old and deep and so mired in inane laughter and coffee and conversation that not even the most determined / clueless / pompous / insecure / prattling spouse can unwind them (thanks gods)! But yeah, for the rest - RIP.